Recently, electronic equipment has made rapid progress and various devices are mounted on electronic equipment and devices has been downsized. Therefore, the devices can be mounted on electronic equipment at high density. Accordingly, many packages are mounted on a surface of the electronic equipment.
Examples of the devices described above are CSP (Chip Size Package), BGA (Ball Grid Array) and QFP (Quad Flat Package). That is, the devices are made thinner and lighter. Further, the intervals of the pins incorporated into the devices are arranged at short intervals and the number of pins has increased.
Concerning the devices described above, in order for the electronic equipment to exhibit a previously designed operating function, the quality of the devices must be high. Therefore, in the manufacturing process of electronic parts, it is important to provide an electronic part inspection device, which will be referred to as a device tester hereinafter, which judges whether or not the quality of the devices is high at the time of shipment.
In this connection, in order to enhance the efficiency of the inspection made by the above device tester, an automatic handler is provided which holds, conveys and loads a device to be inspected from an accommodation region to a conveyance region.
The above handler in the case of the handler of so-called horizontal model type, operation is executed as follows. A tray accommodating an uninspected device is arranged in a loader portion in the handler. The uninspected device is automatically handled and positioned. When necessary, the uninspected device is heated. An electric test is made for the uninspected device by a test head portion of an adjacent device tester through a measuring socket. According to the result data of the test, the thus tested device is classified into a non-defective item, a defective item or an item to be tested again and automatically accommodated on a tray.
Referring to FIG. 15, the handler, which has been previously proposed by the present applicant, will be explained below.
This handler is a laterally moving-type in which the device positioning table S is linearly moved in the lateral direction. That is, in this handler, the lateral moving plate 3, on which the device D supplied by the supplying hand 2 is set, is moved. The disk 5 in the inspection and conveyance device B is driven by the motor 4. By the suction pad provided on the first stage 6 side loaded on the disk 5, the device D is sucked and raised from the lateral moving plate 3. By the rotation of the disk 5, the device D is faced to an upper portion of the measuring socket T and pushed into the measuring socket T. Then the device D is measured by the measuring device. Information based on the thus obtained measurement values is transmitted to the discharge hand 8 and a direction is given to indicate where the inspected device D is to be discharged.
That is, the characteristic of device D is detected by the measuring device and information of the quality of device D is obtained. According to the information of the quality of the device D, the discharge hand 8 is made to discharge the device D to an objective portion (unloader 9) according to the quality of the device D.
On the other hand, various devices are becoming more and more downsized and made thin and light. Further, pins in the devices are arranged at shorter intervals, and the number of pins has increased. Therefore, uninspected device D must be accurately positioned, pushed and held in the measuring socket, which is to be used for the inspection of device D, by the handler. In order to cope with the above tasks, the Official gazettes of JP-A-9-281165, 10-123207 and 2006-337044 propose a means for measuring and correcting a device terminal position by an image recognizing device and loading the device in a measuring socket.
However, even by the means described above, a series of steps of holding, conveying, loading into a socket, pushing and accommodating can not be accomplished correspondingly to various types of devices.
Especially, when device D to be inspected is loaded into the measuring socket, a method is employed in which device D to be inspected is dropped into the measuring socket from a position very close to the measuring socket or a position right above the measuring socket. When this method is employed, even if positioning is accurately made with great effort, there is a fear that the posture of the device may collapse.
In the system in which the sucking, socket loading nozzle and the measuring clamper are separated from each other and after a robot loads the device into the IC socket, the device is pushed by the measuring clamper which is a different unit, it is difficult to provide sufficiently high processing capacity.
For the reasons described above, the present applicant aimed at the invention of a handler capable of accomplishing the following objects.
(1) In the case where a device is sucked from an uninspection tray located at a rough position and the position is corrected as it is and then the device is loaded in a measuring socket, it is sufficient to use a necessarily minimum pushing force. On the other hand, at the time of making measurements, it is necessary to use a predetermined pushing force (several kg to several tens kg). Therefore, the handler can generate such a pushing force; however, there is no fear that the handler may damage the device.
(2) Corresponding to the high performance of a tester, the device holding portion must be provided with a structure of the mechanism capable of enhancing the processing capacity. For example, the device holding portion must be provided with the constitution in which the function of sucking and the function of clamping are carried out being changed over. Further, the device holding portion must be provided with the constitution in which the device changing time into a plurality of holding portions and into the IC socket can be reduced.
(3) Various types of devices can be handled.
(4) In order to reduce the occurrence of a defective contact of the device with the contact pieces which is caused by foreign objects such as a refuse of solder when the measuring socket contact pieces are downsized so as to reduce the intervals of the pins and increase the number of the pins, it is necessary to make the structure so that tips of the contact pieces and the test pins can be cleaned.
The present invention has been proposed from the above viewpoints. An object of the present invention is to provide a handler including a plurality of device holding portions having an independent device position correcting function capable of coping with the inspection of various types of devices and also including a cleaning function.